What the Numbers Mean

Pedigree Analysis:

      COI (Coefficient of Inbreeding): a probability-based estimate of the heterozygosity (the similarity of the two halves of the DNA inherited from each parent) calculated from the appearance of repeated ancestors in a pedigree. This is always expressed as a percentage and should be accompanied by the number of generations in the pedigree it has been calculated from, and low numbers indicate more heterozygosity and unrelated parents (under 6.5% means the parents are less related than first cousins), while high numbers indicate homozygosity and related parents (25%+ indicates the parents are at least as related as first-degree relatives, siblings, parent/child).
      Wycliffe Contribution: The percentage of the pedigree that traces back to the five founding poodles of the Canadian breeder Jean Lyle (Wycliffe) from the 50s. This breeder was very successful and her dogs were in high demand, and hence became influential the world over in poodle pedigrees. There is nothing wrong per se with these poodles and their descendants, but the vast majority today are in the region of 50% Wycliffe (the Wycliffe bottleneck) and this sort of imbalance in the gene pool is not the best outcome for the sustainability of the breed. Therefore, it is important to preserve low Wycliffe bloodlines and breed low Wycliffe poodles who descend more from bloodlines that are less represented today to help to adjust the balance and increase genetic diversity across the gene pool.
       OEA (Old English Apricot) contribution: the percentage of the pedigree that traces back to five apricot dogs from England, mainly via Vulcan Golden Light and his son Alpenden Golden Sand. As with the Wycliffe bottleneck, there was nothing wrong with these dogs and there is nothing wrong with their descendants. However many apricot poodles today are 50%+ OEA, so for people breeding apricots and reds this is something worth considering. The OEA bottleneck has nowhere near affected the breed as a whole as severely as the Wycliffe bottleneck, and it is generally only significant in apricot and red standard poodles.

Genoscoper's 'mydogdna':

This is a DNA test where the owner sends a mouth swab from their poodle to a laboratory for analysis and receives the results in an online format.

       'Genetic Diversity': This is a measure of heterosis (see IR) based on a large number of markers throughout the DNA. It's expressed as a percentage relative to all the dogs who have been tested, and can be compared to the average for the breed and for dogs as a whole on a graph on the results page. As the number of markers used is so large, unfortunately the data cannot be analysed with third party programmes.
       Genetic Relationships: This shows where a poodle fits in to the population of all the poodles analysed (you can interact with the graph to change it from standard poodles to all sizes of poodles, and compare poodles to other breeds from the curly water dog landrace such as Barbets and Lagotto Romagnolo). Families and related dogs tend to appear close together -- high Wycliffe poodles tend to appear as a dense cluster in the centre of the standard poodle graph. Poodles who appear away from the main cluster are likely to have underrepresented DNA. The breed is most sustainable if there is a large area covered with poodle markers and they are distributed as evenly as possible.

VGL's genetic diversity test & SPD:

This is a DNA test where the owner sends a mouth swab from their poodle to a laboratory for analysis and receives the results as a list of 35 numbers on a PDF certificate. The numbers correspond to DNA markers sampled, and can be entered into third-party software such as SPD, available from the Poodle Health Registry website in exchange for a donation.

       IR (internal relatedness): This is an estimate of heterosis based on how many markers are the same on both 'halves' of the DNA the dog inherited from its parents. It is comparable to COI in pedigree analysis or what Genoscoper calls genetic diversity. Heterozygous dogs have negative IRs, and a dog that is completely homozygous (all markers the same) for each marker the test samples will have an IR of +1.
       OI (outlier index): This is a calculation comparing the markers in an individual dog to those of the population as a whole. Each marker can either be common in the breed or uncommon. If all the markers in a poodle are common, it will have an OI of zero. Dogs of other unrelated breeds with different genetic compositions will tend to have OIs in excess of 1 when compared to poodles. A larger proportion of uncommon markers translates to a higher OI. These numbers do not remain static over time, as if dogs or bloodlines are bred widely and the offspring tested and added to the database, the incidence of all the markers they happen to have increases, and any markers not represented will decrease.

SPD and Genoscoper both allow breeders to perform mating calculations from the results of tested males and females to predict the most likely outcome for the puppies. SPD also allows users to perform 12- and 15-generation COI calculations from pedigrees.